There is no 'pee' in public / State appeals court rules act is illegal

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 8, 2006

(3-8) 13:32 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- It's a crime in California to urinate in a public place, a state appeals court ruled today.

The case before the court came from Berkeley, where a police officer detained a man urinating in the parking lot of a closed restaurant one Sunday morning in January 2003. The officer searched David McDonald and found drugs.

McDonald was charged with narcotics possession. But if he hadn't been committing a crime in the first place -- urinating in the open -- the search would have been illegal and the found drugs couldn't be used against him.

To deal with the question, a Court of Appeal panel in San Francisco turned to a 19th century state law that defines a public nuisance as an act that is "injurious to health, or is indecent, or offensive to the senses."

The act must also interfere with "the comfortable enjoyment of life or property" by a community, or a neighborhood, or "any considerable number of persons."

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What McDonald was doing fit the bill, the court said.

The criteria spelled out in the nuisance law might not always apply to urinating in the great outdoors, the judges added. For example, "a hiker responding to an irrepressible call of nature in an isolated area in the backwoods cannot reasonably be seen as interfering with any right common to the public."

But in a more populated area, the court said, the same conduct "involves an interference with the public's right to a 'decent society' and to the use of the streets."